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second," the man said. "An operation that would cost eighty thousand here in Atlanta might cost twenty thousand there; plus, they get a vacation at a five-star Indian resort to boot."
    "Wow!" the woman commented. "But is it safe?"
    "That would be my concern as well," the man agreed, "which is why this story that's just come in is so interesting. The Indian government, which has been supportive of this medical tourism with economic incentives, has claimed over the last number of years that the results are as good as or better than anywhere in the West. They say the reason is that the surgeons are all board-certified, and the equipment and hospitals, some of which are accredited by the International Joint Commission, are state-of-the-art and brand-new.
    However, there've never really been much data and statistics in any of the medical journals to back up such claims. Just a few moments ago CNN learned from a known, reliable source that a generally healthy sixty-four-year-old American woman from Queens, New York, named Maria Hernandez, who'd had an uncomplicated hip replacement some twelve hours earlier, suddenly died at seven-fifty-four Monday night, India time, at the Queen Victoria Hospital in New Delhi, India. Of particular interest, the source said she was certain that this tragic passing of a healthy sixty-four-year-old was merely the tip of the iceberg."
    "Very interesting," the woman said. "I trust we'll be hearing more."
    "That's my understanding," the man agreed.
    "Now, let's move on to the interminable '08 presidential campaign."
    Jennifer sat back, dazed. In her mind she repeated the name: Maria Hernandez from Queens, New York. Jennifer's paternal grandmother, the most important person in her life, was named Maria Hernandez, and more worrisome, she lived in Queens. Even more worrisome, she had a bad hip that had been progressively worsening. Just a month ago, she'd asked Jennifer's opinion if she should get it repaired. Jennifer's advice had been that only Maria could answer such a question, since it depended, at this stage, on how much disability and discomfort it caused.
    "But India?" Jennifer shook her head. The fact that it seemed so totally unlikely that her grandmother would go to India without discussing the idea with her was Jennifer's main source of hope that the story was just a coincidence and didn't involve her Maria Hernandez but some other Maria Hernandez who also lived in Queens. Jennifer and her grandmother were extremely close, since Maria was Jennifer's ersatz mother. Jennifer's real mother had been killed when Jennifer was only three, as the tragic victim of a hit-and-run driver on the Upper East Side of Manhattan. Jennifer, her two older brothers, Ramón and Diego, as well as her good-for-nothing father, Juan, had lived in Maria's tiny one-bedroom row-house apartment in Woodside, Queens, almost from the day of the accident.
    Jennifer had been the last child to move out, and that hadn't happened until she'd left for medical school. In Jennifer's mind, Maria was a saint whose own husband had abandoned her. Maria had not only allowed them all to live with her, she'd supported and nurtured them all while working as a nanny and housekeeper. Jennifer and her brothers helped with after-school jobs as they got older, but the main breadwinner had been Maria.
    As for Juan, he had done nothing for as long as Jennifer could remember. Supposedly having suffered an old incapacitating back injury before Jennifer was born, he'd been unable to work. Before her death, Jennifer's mother, Mariana, had been the only wage earner, a buyer for Bloomingdale's. Now that Jennifer was nearing the end of medical school and knew something about psychosomatic illness and malingering, she had even more reason to question her father's supposed disability and despise him even more.
    As the lounge chair she was sitting in was low with high arms, Jennifer had to struggle to get to her feet. She couldn't just sit there with the